The Swag House

Unless you're drawing explicit realism, in my opinion, expressions should be exaggerated to some degree. If you aren't doing a 1:1 recreation, the point is to get the FEELING across. Try making the expression you want to draw and feeling how your face pinches and stretches.

Skin doesn't just "disappear" when your face moves it around --- that's where wrinkles come from! Pay attention to where your skin creases when you emote, and use it to your benefit. It's a fine line between overdoing it and underdoing it -- find your own balance.

Ultimately, every expression has a little bit of push and pull, unless your face is completely neutral (and even then, there are still some wrinkles...). Learning to think of expressions as actions and reactions is VERY helpful in learning to draw them without needing a reference, and in learning how to stylize and push expressions based on references as well!

I think a lot of people end up with stiff or unexpressive emotions in their art because they're just trying to recreate a picture instead of understanding WHY and HOW the face is moving --- and it's a tough thing that takes a while to really pick up and learn. Hopefully is helpful in showing a way of thinking about it that can influence your process and approach to emotions!!!

Also, bonus: even without the lines, the planes alone still show a LOT of emotion.

this is the Phoenix zoo, she's got plenty of outdoor space 👍

this dog’s name was John. they found him half drowned in a bag of puppies that were not so fortunate as he was, and was taken in immediately. he was a runt and not quite right (most likely from the whole half drowned thing), but a very loving dog. the problem with John was that he smelled like death, and no one knew why. vets couldn’t figure it out. it was obviously some kind of skin problem, but they had no idea what kind. all anyone knew was that if you touched him, you would smell like death too, so you couldn’t pet him, and that for some reason, the only thing that made the smell go away was being around other dogs. so they got another dog and the death smell stopped and John lived a very happy life

when he was getting old, maybe about 15 years, part of his skull caved in. just like that! suddenly had a huge dent in his head! and he was totally fine. didn’t notice it, didn’t affect him at all. just this massive dent right there in his head where his skull had collapsed in on his brain, and he was still the happiest and most loving dog. the skull cave in, for whatever reason, caused the ear on that side of his head to just fall off entirely, but again, perfectly happy dog who did not know he was down an ear and a fully formed skull. they took him to the vet, thinking maybe they should put him down. I mean, wouldn’t you think so? but the vet said that the dog was eating, and pooping, and happy, so there was no reason to put him down, so they didn’t

but that’s not even the weird part. the weird part is the area of the brain that got caved in on was apparently the area that registers pain, so this one-eared, collapsed skull dog could no longer feel any pain. he got old, his joints got stiff, his teeth rotted out of his head, his tongue hung out of his mouth and got black and hard, and he felt none of it! in fact, he was happier than he’d ever been feeling no pain, and the fact that he didn’t feel how much he was falling apart somehow made him live until he was 23. that’s right, the collapsed skull, one eared, zero teeth, smells like literal death when alone dog lived to be 23 years old. they used to joke that he’d been dead for years, but was too stupid to realize it yet

Dragonify